A Fading Caricature: Riley Puckett and Country Music's Silencing Power
An article for Southern Culture’s Winter 2025 edition on country music pioneer, Riley Puckett.
Abstract: This paper examines the commercial success and subsequent obscurity of country music pioneer George Riley Puckett, one of the most recorded artists of his day. The research investigates his blindness to explore how his work was marketed to contemporary audiences. These promotional narratives aided in his commercial success during his lifetime while also contributing to his later absence from the historical record. Atlanta, Georgia, in the mid-1920s is examined as an analog to Nashville, Tennessee, determining that Atlanta's music scene was inherently more diverse than other musical hotbeds. This diversity, reflected in the city's musical output, challenges the bigoted and racialized marketing strategies utilized by major record labels. These insights help to reposition Riley Puckett as a representative figure of shared musical lineages that have been inaccurately labeled along strict racial lines, commenting on which actors are allowed to animate country music's stages while challenging its status as a white, nostalgic medium.
